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Nurses face pay cuts in new award system

Kirsty Needham

THOUSANDS of NSW disability workers and aged care nurses stand to lose pay under modern awards after the Fair Work tribunal ignored Federal Government advice and refused changes to two awards.

Private sector community and social workers will have penalty rates cut from July.

''It was sheer bloody-mindedness by the commission,'' Michael Flinn, the NSW deputy secretary of the Australian Services Union, said.

The Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, said workers would not be worse off because they could apply for a ''take home pay order'' from the tribunal to maintain wages.

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But the union and the Australian Nursing Federation rejected this as a remedy, saying workers can only apply for an order after they had lost pay, and the two unions did not have the legal resources needed to flood the tribunal with thousands of individual applications.

''We thought Work Choices was crook … but what has replaced it is certainly not optimal,'' Judith Kiejda, acting secretary of the nursing federation's NSW branch, said. ''In NSW, it takes us several steps backwards.''

It was ''almost impossible'' to lodge a class action for take home pay orders for thousands of aged care nurses hit by lower wages because individual situations varied, she said.

The nurses federation had asked for a two-year delay in pay rates for aged care nurses, who could lose $300 a week in NSW by the end of the award phase-in. The Federal Government had backed the delay. The tribunal rejected it on Christmas Eve.

The commission finalised decisions on 30 modern awards in the days before Christmas and on New Year's Eve.

The Federal and NSW governments had also backed the services union in seeking a delay until 2011 to penalty rate cuts for NSW disability workers. Most employers had also agreed to the delay, which would allow time for a national test case on pay equity in the sector. But this was also rejected by the tribunal.

Mr Flinn said: ''There will be significant loss of pay, and this is a sector dominated by women who are already poorly paid. It makes no sense.''

The union complaints follow those from horticulture employers calling for a delay and retailer claims of 3000 job losses because of increased wages.

Ms Gillard said union and employer counter-claims were inevitable and the Government had to get the balance right.